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Besides workshops about social media I've also been giving workshops about Productive Knowledge Work. It's a lot of fun. And I'm surprised at how many people are looking for ways to become a productive knowledge worker.One theme that is addressed by the participants in almost every workshop is 'email guidelines'. They say: We should agree not to 'reply all', have clear email subject lines, etc.I shared the slides I use for you. If you have comments or questions, I'd love to hear them. Productive Knowledge Work WorkshopView more presentations from Samuel Driessen. Tags van Technorati: gtd,getting things done,productivity,knowledge worker,email

Not too long ago I shared an idea I had. Wouldn't it be neat if you could follow a news topic? I wrote:Wouldn't it be interesting if you could just point to the article or video about the topic and say: subscribe to all articles about this topic. A topic-RSS feed. Of course you can do this for big topics, using hashtags in Twitter for instance. And you can also define a query and subscribe to that feed, using Google Alerts for instance. But for smaller topics it's not that easy.Or am I missing something? Or do you know of apps that already solve this problem?Well, it looks like some people at Google had the same thoughts. Recently Google launched 'Living stories'. The NY Times and the Google System blog ran articles about this new app. Currently it only works with news from two large newspapers: The New York Times and The Washington Post. But it relates well to my idea.Think about what this could mean. We could be able to point to an article on the web and say: se…

It must take Jane McConnell a lot of time to write her yearly Global Intranet Trends report. 300 organizations participated in her Intranet survey this year! At least it took me a lot of time to read the report! But it was well worth my time again. And I'm sure it's worth your time (and money) as well.I'd like to share with you what I learned from this report. Hopefully it will trigger you to read the report as well. I'd also like to share why I take time to read this report. Let's start there.Intranet and the state of the intranet may seem to be boring and 'old skool'. 'Social media in the enterprise', that's what we want to read about and discuss. Well, this report is basically about all the web applications in organizations and how they are connected, used, valued, developed, etc. I find that very interesting. But what I find even more interesting is that the intranet says a lot about and contributes to the way we communicate in the organiza…

A couple of days ago I posted about 'candor'. In that same issue of HBR another article was written about 'trust'. Roderick Kramer wrote "Rethinking Trust" (June 2009) - summary pdf here.The open source, web 2.0 and knowledge management domain talks about trust a lot. We should be opener as people and as companies. We should trust our customers more. Etc.However the economic turmoil we're in and how we got there puts a question mark behind 'trust'. Isn't it naive to trust? And to be open? If you don't watch out people will run off with your product ideas and, even worse, your money.Kramer wants to 'rethink trust'. We can learn who to trust and how to trust in a more disciplined and sustained way. Even though "human beings are naturally predisposed to trust. (...) We're born to be engaged and to engage with others, which is what trust is largely about."Kramer defines several rules to help us trust in the 'right…

I recently learned an important new word: candor. "Candor" is honesty, openness, sincerity. HBR ran an interesting article about this term and what it means for business some time ago: "What's needed next: A Culture of Candor" (June 2009) by James O'Toole and Warren Bennis.When talking about 'enterprise 2.0' and openness and transparency, words like 'trust' and 'authenticity' are often also discussed. Another important aspect is 'candor'. The authors stress its importance due to the context we live and work in:Now the forces of globalization and technology have conspired to complicate the competitive arena, creating a need for leaders who can manage rapid innovation. Expectations about the corporation's role in social issues such as environmental degradation, domestic job creation, and even poverty in the developing world have risen sharply as well.According to the authors this context asks for a specific type of leaders…

Finding the right tools to support your daily work is important. To me at least. I'm not a super early adopter, but if I see a tool that fits my needs I'll go ahead and try it.When this post was in draft I was planning to write about Tweetdeck: why I use it, how I use it and why I love it. However I practically stopped using Tweetdeck. Why? Well, I tweeted about it here and here: I'm loosing too many tweets. More specifically: I simply don't want to miss tweets from some people. That's one of the reasons I started to read tweets from Google Reader (which doesn't really work for me). (I also use Google Reader to backup my tweets. This does work great.) I didn't uninstall Tweetdeck yet, though. I found myself using Tweetdeck again to live tweet a conference...What I liked about Tweetdeck is what everybody likes about it: It makes tweeting much easier. Retweeting is easy, defining Groups is easy, adding hashtags (automatically) is easy, etc.Then I bumped int…

Oof! I've been wanting to write about this for some time... There's always been debate on how to define 'knowledge management'. Dave Snowden is one of the big thinkers in this area. He has always been critical of the old-skool knowledge management approaches and definitions. Interestingly the social Internet is showing he has been pretty right all along.Snowden came up with a definition not too long ago. (I'm not sure it's his first attempt, as Luis Suarez says. At least Snowden implicitly defined what KM is here, for instance.) Here's his definition:The purpose of knowledge management is to provide support for improved decision making and innovation throughout the organization. This is achieved through the effective management of human intuition and experience augmented by the provision of information, processes and technology together with training and mentoring programmes.The following guiding principles will be appliedAll projects will be clearly linke…

Some very interesting posts about Enterprise 2.0 tools and Expertise Location have been published recently. Let's start with the last one I read first.Prof. Andrew McAfee has a great post about where he finds enterprise 2.0 tools are of most use. In short he says these tools are be used to reach out and connect to people we have weak ties with, potential ties or no ties at all. He's not saying they can't be used to support strong ties. They simply do and can. But when asked what gap e2.0 tools fill, it's firstly not the support of those strong ties.This is very interesting. And I agree with his conclusion. We're seeing this in practice too in the company I work for. The surprise it gives people when they connect to people inside or outside the organization they've never met before!McAfee's conclusions also relates to work done knowledge mapping and expertise location. And to a book I read some time ago: Cross & Parker, 'The hidden power of social n…

And here's the last presentation of the KM 'Made in Holland' meeting. Bozena van Trigt of Triam Float kindly emailed me a link to her presentation. I had to leave early, so I had to miss her presentation regrettably and don't have notes going along with this presentation... But I will, as requested by Bozena, share her presentation here for completeness sake!The topic of her presentation is very interesting: knowledge management in a process operator environment.KM "Made in Holland" presentatie Triam FloatView more presentations from MB van Trigt. Tags van Technorati: knowledge management,learning

Title of presentation: Wikipolicy: institutional policy & social software by Rienke Schutte, Hogeschool Zuyd, Knowledge community Knowledge Organizations and Knowledge Management. Related article about the Wikipolicy.
In 2008, the 'Hogeschool' (English: college) initiated a project entitled “Policy Workshop 2013”. The result of this project would be a policy framework for their organization. The new policy should bring together insights, opinions and wishes of students, staff and stakeholders. A wiki was one of the instruments to achieve that goal.
Objectives of the project:powerful, stakeholder oriented vision strategic direction shift towards a co-creative organization Plan of action (in 2008):wiki with 4 main topics (platform: Wikispaces) conferences for managers, teams, external experts (educational/non-educational) work meetings flyers weekly blog members of the board Café 2020 (SURF - foundation scenario's) formal conclusions by management Evaluation of the proje…

In 2007 the HR department of the Hogeschool Rotterdam heard of presentation by Wim Veen ("Homo zappiens") about Gen Y, etc. They wanted to undestand this deeply and act on it.
Goal of their HR department was to change the education style and learning methods.
Ton tells about how the project to achieve the goals was set up. I love the way this project was organized without fixed gates. They explicitly took a more chaotic approach. Progress of the project was measured based on quality measures. This gave educators lots of opportunities to try, experiment, fail, learn, etc. without time pressure. Examples: blogging, make screencasts, education and video's.
Also points to the Social Media Classroom.Yammer was also set up to keep the community together after the project ended.Tags van Technorati: learning,knowledge management

Christiaan Stam, associate lector, knowledge community Intellectual Capital, Hogeschool INHolland.Title: Learning from elderly people.Look at ageing from knowledge management perspective.This work was triggered by a thesis in his PhD thesis: "In the near future the success of companies depends on the will to invest in the development of older employees."Provides numbers on demographics and ageing.The image of older workers is based on prejudices, myths. They are false, but self-fulfilling.How can we retain knowledge from older workers? (brain drain) Lots is being done (successfully) by companies, such as Thales and Shell, in this area.Christiaan would like to address this question scientifically, using CIMO-logic (Context, Intervention, Mechanism, Outcome).Gives 6 intervention for knowledge retention:file transfer conversationleaving expert interviewsexpert-apprentice relationindividual gap analysisknowledge recallBased on the analysis of the above-mentioned interventions wi…

Rene Jansen gave the second presentation at KM Made in Holland. Here's his presentation (in Dutch):Kennismanagement met Winkwaves KenniscafeView more documents from Rene Jansen. Some personal notes:Winkwaves (gestart in 2005) is Rene's company. Their fascination is how people live together and collaborate in knowledge intensive organizations.And how "untapped potential of technology can contribute when organization have more than one coffee machine".Tells about Winkwave's Knowledge Cafés.The different roles in social media: Tippers, Storytellers, self-advertisers, Archivers, Promotors, Reactors, Connectors, lurkers, one day flies.They use persona research: segmentation based on goals, attitude and behavior.Points to the Soft systems methodology (Peter Checkland): start with looking at the way people really work/live.Social media can only do the following: make content visible and support many-to-many conversations. Sheet 15 is very interesting in this context!Give…

This presentation gives an overview of the APOSDLE project (Advanced Process-oriented self-directed learning environment). Title of the presentation is "Learning in the workplace: supporting it by the APOSDLE system".This project runs from March 2006 to February 2010 and has 12 partners.Goal of this project is to design a domain independent system for knowledge workers using exciting sources in the company.Assumptions:People mostly learn at work in a self-steered way. > True, learning at a computerized workspace is seen. Self-steered learning during work is mostly initiated by the actual work people do. > True, a work task is the most important trigger for learning. During self-steered learning at work bottlenecks occur that should be overcome. > True, in general learning is successful (72%), but there are several issues. (non existing info, lots of info instead of precise info, experts not willing to share, etc.) Inter-personal communication is important when in se…

Chris Brogan's post inspired me to tell you about my morning work routine. Like many social media enthusiasts I get lots of strange and anxious looks when I tell them about the way I work and the information I process. They're even more surprised when they hear it doesn't take as much time as you would think.We'll here's my daily morning routine! Every morning, when I work at the office or at home, I open the following applications:Outlook (client or web) = work email. Usually I can go grab a cup of coffee before Outlook is ready to use... I go through my mail following the GTD flow and empty my inbox (inbox zero). All email that can be processed in 2 minutes (which is about 90% of my email...) is done right away. Other emails contains tasks which are put on my Outlook task list, or contain an appointment (and is automatically put in my Calendar). If a task has to be finished by a certain date I'll allocate a slot in my calendar to be finished on time. I check…

Does your company share and manage process information centrally? And, if so, where is that information share/stored?I usually make a general distinction when thinking about enterprise information. I distinguish four types of information:process information: information describing the processes of the company, the way of working and best practices, the document templates, etc.product information: information about products, such as designs, requirements, parts descriptions, product structure(s), etc.project information: information used to manage a project, like minutes, task lists, progress reports, customer visit reports, etc.departmental information: information about resources, monthly reports about the department, presentations given to the department, etc.In many companies process information is shared and stored all over the place. Part of the information can be found on the intranet. I think most process info is shared here. Some process information is stored within the proje…

Recently I read a couple of interesting posts/articles about innovation and invention.First of all, Dev Patnaik has a nice post about what empathy has to do with innovation. Dev has seen "companies prosper when they're able to create widespread empathy for the world around them". Empathy is:the ability to reach outside of ourselves and walk in someone else’s shoes, to get where they’re coming from, to feel what they feel.And this should be widespread in the organization. People within the company are able to stand in each other's shoes and in the shoes of their customers. They understand what's happening outside and respond to that accordingly. In this way the edges of companies start to blur.Dev says we're lacking empathy not innovation. This is an interesting point also related to the posts stressing the importance of an innovative culture.One of the facets of empathy is praising others. Steven DeMaio over at the HBR blog has an interesting post on praisin…

Working for a large company can be tricky sometimes. Definitely when it comes to meeting a colleague you don't know. You only know his or her name and the meeting room.Of course most companies have who-is-who databases with a picture of the colleague you're meeting (Yellow Pages). So now you can do some facial pattern recognition besides looking for the meeting room.Can't this be done in a better way? Micello seems to have asked this too. They want to be the Google Maps of the inside of buildings. So Google Maps helps you find the address. Micello takes it from there and helps you find the location you're looking for after you went in the front door. For example: you're looking for a store in a shopping mall. Google Maps will take you to the mall. Micello will take you to the shop in the mall.Now extend this to companies. Search (in general) in enterprises is usually not very well implemented. This also goes for finding locations insides companies. Micello could h…

If I had no budget limitations, who would I invite to speak about innovation for my colleagues? Recently I was asked to provide a list of inspiring speakers about innovation. The focus of the talk should be in the area of creativity, innovation and invention. This is the list I came up with. If you have other's you would recommend, please leave a comment!My list, again, in no specific order:Scott Berkun, author of 'The Myth of Innovation'. Nice book about what innovation is and what it's not.Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of 'Flow: The psychology of optimal experience'.John Seely Brown, ex Xerox PARC director, talks, publishes and thinks about new forms of learning and education and the role of technology. Wrote an interesting report for McKinsey called ‘The next frontiers of innovation’ with the next person on this listJohn Hagel, thinker/author about mega trends (shifts) in the world and its meaning for enterprises.Clay Christensen, author of the well-known …

Some time ago a friend asked me to give him a list of my favorite books about information and knowledge management. I emailed them to him, but I'd also like to share my list with you.I'd like to hear how this list relates to your favorite IM and KM books. If you would recommend other books, please leave a comment with the title!Here's my list (in no specific order):Chun Wei Choo, Information Management for the Intelligent Organization. Basic book on information management.Thomas Davenport, Thinking for a living. About the characteristics of knowledge work.Peter Drucker, The Effective Executive. Must read because the term 'knowledge worker' is used in this book for the first time.John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid, The Social Life of Information. Great book stressing that information is social. This is mainstream now, but at the time this book was published it wasn't...Mathieu Weggeman, Kennismanagement. [Dutch] The Dutch book about knowledge management.Ikujoro N…

Today is Blog Action Day! I just went over to the Blog Action Day site to see how many people have registered. At this time 8,103 sites have registered, resulting in 11,788,878 readers. Wow!This year's Blog Action Day is about 'Climate Change'. A big topic these days. And I'm happy it is too. The number of times we talk about 'it' at home, at lunch, at the coffee corner or in the carpool with colleagues clearly shows: this issue grips lots of us.However, because it's such a big topic and lots of people are talking about it, I'm also sensing that lots of people don't really know what to do about it. It's too big for me to really make a change. I don't agree, but I do understand. Is the fact that I'm doing all these small things in my personal life really making a change for our climate and the future of this world? This question is a serious one and should be answered regularly. I know all kinds of websites and organizations are providin…

Wow, looks like there's a new interesting book out. It's called Borrowing Brilliance. The Six Steps to Business Innovation by Building on the Ideas of Others by David Murray. I'm definitely going to buy it. Why?Well, the review in BusinessWeek triggered me. This book seems to look at ideas, creativity and innovation being sparked by other (older) ideas. I think this point is often overlooked. Your idea has to be brand new to be a good idea. Your invention has to be done all by yourself or else it's not really an invention. This book says: That's not true. Lots of inventions and innovations are sparked by old(er) ideas and innovations.And it provides six steps to help you apply this fact in your personal practice or in your business. As I understand the first step is: define the problem you want to solve. What I'm hoping is that the book will say: Try to define your problem as a wish. My experience is that looking at a problem can limit the creativity of the pe…

I just registered for this year's Blog Action Day about Climate Change!I participated last year too. I really like the initiative. It's a really smart way of getting all kinds of people together on the web thinking about one issue. What you have to do to join in? Just write one post on the 15th of October about 'climate change' and link to the Blog Action Day site. It's that easy.So, are you also participating?Tags van Technorati: blogging,climate change

Recently Luis Suarez pointed to this nice overview of the different social media policies companies have (- Thanks Luis!). It's nice also from the perspective that it shows which and how many companies are taking social media seriously.However, Océ's social media policy hasn't been shared yet... We'll here it is! As you may notice our policy has been inspired by IBM's. So, thanks for leading us IBM!Océ Social Computing GuidelinesOcé encourages all employees to communicate open and transparent, for the benefit of Océ, your colleagues worldwide and yourself. With regards to participation in social media on behalf of Océ, it is required to obtain management approval in advance and to focus your contributions on topics related to your position.Every Océ employee has signed a contract with Océ. Act according to the guidelines provided in this contract. These guidelines also apply when communicating on-line.Every employee is personally responsible for the content they pu…

Last weekend I read an intriguing article in the Dutch newspaper, NRC. A communication researcher, Tjardus van Citters, wanted to give us all well-meaning advice. (Dutch titel: 'Welgemeend advies van een communicatie-expert: minder communicatie, s.v.p', Sept. 20, 2009.)His article gives an overview of the sources that are increasing the number of signals we process each day. For instance the number of communication providers has increased. And the fact that our senses are being addressed more than ever.This overview leads to his advice to communicate less. Why? Because our health is at stake. Our brains get more impulses to process. The model of 'selective perception' is out-dated. We get irritated by communication we did not want to see, leading to restlessness, even illness.He therefore advises us to turn off signals. Read the news once a week instead of every few hours. Unsubscribe to things you don't want to receive. Be clear what kind of emails you don't …

Thomas Friedman in The World is Flat and Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams in Wikinomics have predicted that the way companies will recruit people will be fundamentally different in the future.In the past the model was easy: Get the best and brightest people to work for you. Of course these new employees would move close to your company and work inside the firewall as much as possible.Of course we've seen some movement in this area. Outsourcing of jobs to India or China. Tele-commuting, working-more-from-home, etc.At first I thought it looked like Google has taken this a step further. But this is fake (Twitter spam...). But the idea is great and got me thinking. In short the site said: Everyone with a computer and a broadband connection can work for us right from their homes. (And aren't we already, but clicking on links!? ;-)) Seriously, this could be interesting and big in my opinion. This 'offer' is 'only' focused on the US and Canada. But what if - and I…